Fat grafting is a very common plastic surgery procedure that involves suctioning fat from one portion of the body, processing that fat and reinjecting the healthy fat into a new tissue bed. A problem with fat grafting is that there are variable survival results from 50-90% that have been reported in literature.
All fat grafting involves two primary and separate procedures. The first is harvesting the fat cells. There are numerous ways to recover fat cells and the most preferred techniques involve recovering fat cells from the patient desiring a fat graft from a fat cell rich donor site. This fat cell recovery often involves liposuction. Once recovered, the fat cells are processed by removing undesirable lipids, anesthetics and medical fluids from the fat with a goal of obtaining healthy fat cells devoid of other tissue. The yield of viable cells after a fat graft procedure can be no greater than the material being injected.
In fat grafting, the surgeon typically over injects the amount of fat cells to allow for necrosis (cell death) that occurs. For the fat cells to survive, a good vascularization of blood supply must be established at the recipient site receiving the fat graft. The advantage of fat grafting to breast or buttock areas for augmentation or scalp regions for hair growth is that it is 100 percent natural. The disadvantage is the two-step process of recovery and then implantation is considered more expensive than a synthetic implant procedure for breast implant, for example. Accordingly, the ability to insure successful and reliable results with the fat grafting technique needs to be established to justify this approach.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an efficient and reliable technique that guarantees the best outcome with a high percentage of viable cell survival.
The present invention employs newly discovered information and refinements in the use of acoustic shock waves to treat patients to enhance successful fat grafting. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an efficient and reliable technique that guarantees the best outcome with a high percentage of viable cell survival.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,470,240 B2, entitled “Pressure Pulse/Shock Wave Therapy Methods And An Apparatus For Conducting The Therapeutic Methods”, is disclosed a novel use of unfocused shock waves in a low energy range to stimulate a cellular substance. From this patent a family of treatment patents evolved. The list includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,841,995; 7,883,482; 7,905,845 all divisional applications; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,507,213 entitled “Pressure Pulse/Shock Wave Therapy Methods For Organs”; U.S. Pat. No. 7,544,171 B2 entitled “Methods for Promoting Nerve Regeneration and Neuronal Growth and Elongation”; all teaching a new useful way to deliver acoustic shock waves to achieve a healing response. Each of these patents are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
In addition, the present invention has recently received U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,257,282 and 8,535,249 for the device to perform these methods by delivering low energy unfocused acoustic shock waves to the cellular tissue being treated. None of these earlier patents provided any guidance on the use of low energy acoustic shock waves on otherwise healthy soft tissue, all deal with the correction of an abnormality or defect or an injury requiring a healing repair. In fact, in the case of treating cellulite, the objective was to destroy fat cells with high energy acoustic waves or even ultrasonic waves that generated cell rupturing shearing forces and heat. In fact, unfocused low energy shock waves had little effect on damaging fat cells to reduce conditions of cellulitis.
While this large volume of research has been rewarded by the granting of numerous patents, much new work has been evolving as the understanding of the technology is being applied. It is in this latest work that some, heretofore, unknown improvements and refinements have been discovered that were hidden from and unappreciated by scientists in this field.